Newsletter

Food Lion welcome addition to MLK Blvd.

A new Food Lion opened Wednesday morning on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Shereatha Williams rings up her first customer at the new Food Lion.

The new Food Lion near the corner of West Gwinnett Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard has rightly been praised for the ways it could transform the neighborhood.

I write often about quality of life issues. Having easy access to reasonably priced food certainly counts.

On my first trip, I was especially pleased with the layout of the parking lot. This is not a large suburban style lot, like the well-landscaped one at Kroger on East Gwinnett Street, but one designed smartly for a relatively tight urban space.

I live more or less equidistant from Kroger and the new Food Lion. Will the new store change my shopping habits or those of others who have shopped at Kroger for years?

Food Lion closes at 10 p.m. each night, while Kroger is open until midnight and frequently has a steady stream of late shoppers buying small numbers of items. Since the recent revamping of the interior, I’d even say the 16-year-old Kroger offers better aesthetics than the new Food Lion.

Still, it’s easy to sign up for Food Lion’s MVP program, which is obviously similar to Kroger’s discount card program. Some of my regular purchases were cheaper, some not.

I’m obviously more familiar with the layout at Kroger, but on my past two trips, inexplicably, I couldn’t find batteries. I found them immediately at Food Lion, right where I thought they would be.

Maybe it was just the newness of everything, but on my first Food Lion visit I had a more pleasant interaction with the checkout clerk and the bagboy than I’ve had at a grocery store anywhere in ages.

Food Lion is accessible from MLK Boulevard but also via Morris Brown Drive further west, an easy option depending on which direction shoppers are travelling.

The back of the building, plainly visible to cars traveling north on MLK Boulevard, is not very attractive. It would be a great spot for some public art, but I don’t expect that to happen.

Eventually, let’s hope we’ll see another business right there on the corner that would obscure the back of the grocery.

Maybe the added traffic to and from Food Lion will spur development there.

SMF heads into final weekend

As the Savannah Music Festival enters its final days, it’s clear the event has been a big hit again this year. Despite meager crowds for a couple of the programs featuring ambitious, hard-to-market international programs, the overall demand has been great, the performances stellar, and the musicians themselves incredibly positive about their experiences.

Perhaps most importantly, it seems the festival has raised its visibility among people and groups who had ignored it in the past. The major supporters with whom I talk seem as enthusiastic as ever. More on all that soon.